The Flowers of Your Life
by chocolateCake27
Summary: How could they just stand there, all so happy and relieved? This had easily been the biggest bloodshed in history. Whole counties had been destroyed, murdered in cold blood, wiped from the face of the planet. Canada was gone. Matthew was gone. Didn't they care?


**Hello, world! This fic has actually been re-uploaded because my computer was being stupid before and wouldn't let me view the thingy where it lets you edit your story. Anyways, the idea for this came to me a couple of days ago while listening to the song 'You Would Have Liked It' by Bleeker Ridge. They're not a very popular band, but they're really good, so if you want you should go check them out.**

** Now read on and enjoy, my lovelies! **

**Disclaimer: Hetalia = not mine.**

**Warnings: Uh, character death and possibly a wee bit of language near the end.**

* * *

The image on the screen was blurred by the poor signal and would jump out of time every few seconds. The man currently being shown stood proud and tall behind a glossy wooden podium, addressing the millions of people who listened intently, clinging onto his every word from the crowds packed around the steps of the White House or from their living rooms at home or, as Gilbert himself currently was, from the tiny television set housed in the frozen arctic base camp he was currently staying in.

The man spoke, and although the movement of his lips was out of sync with the words spoken, Gilbert couldn't be bothered to care any less. It was the words he wanted to hear. It was the words everyone wanted to hear, the words they had been waiting and praying to hear for over two decades.

"_Let us all take this time to rejoice in victory; a victory which we have been striving towards with a determination and bravery that knows no bounds. With every great battle fought there were many lives lost, many homes destroyed and many families torn apart. But our hope… our hope and our will to survive was the one thing which our enemies were never able to take from us. And for that I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Every citizen. Every solider. Every husband, wife, mother, father, brother sister and child. For it was your strength and your heart that has finally allowed this great country and all of its allies to emerge victorious after twenty-one long and painful years of war."_

Gilbert frowned from his position on the sofa, the stress lines on his face made more prominent by the expression. _Not all of them,_ he thought bitterly.

The crowd sang and cheered as the camera panned across the sea of faces. Some smiling, some crying, some kissing and hugging and calling out to one another in joy and triumph.

He felt a pang of sorrow inside his chest as he watched on, and for just a moment the burning, hateful sensation of envy began to well up inside of him.

How could they just stand there, all so happy and relieved? The war may be over, but more strife was sure to follow with depts having to be repaid, whole cities having to be rebuilt and the wounded having to be tended to. How did they expect to repair all the damage that had been done? This had easily been the biggest bloodshed in history. Whole c_ounties _had been destroyed, murdered in cold blood, wiped from the face of the planet.

xXx

_He couldn't sleep. He hadn't been able to for the past seven hours, instead just lying awake in a sort of tired daze as he stared up at the ceiling of the tent. Outside, the steady pattern of the crickets which had accompanied him all night was starting to die down, replaced now with the distant chirping of birds; a sure sign of the approaching daylight._

_The covers he had been sharing shifted, and Gilbert tightened an arm around the sleeping figure at his side, his source of comfort and warmth during the cool summer's night, his link to the world, his reason for staying when all reason stood that he should have been long gone by now._

"_Mornin'," came the quite, stifled yawn._

_Gilbert turned his head to see tired violet eyes blinking back up at him from a peaceful face practically smothered by his chest, which the younger man had been using as a pillow all night._

"_Hey, Birdie," he smiled, suddenly happy, despite his lack of sleep. "Sleep okay?"_

_The Canadian boy nodded. "Yeah, you?"_

_Gilbert shrugged, shifting his arms around the other to better his grip._

_Matthew frowned, squinting through his poor vision to study Gilbert's face. "Couldn't sleep again?" he guessed accurately. _

"_Yeah," Gilbert replied with another shrug. "but whatever."_

_Matthew's frown deepened, worry evident in his eyes as he reaches up, stroking his boyfriend's pale, smooth cheek. "You sure?"_

"_It's nothing," he answered honestly, not wanting to worry the other. "S' fine."_

"_Okay," Matthew bit his lip, still watching him carefully._

"_Come on," Gilbert pulled him in closer, pressing their lips together in a chaste but meaningful kiss before snuggling in next to him, relishing in the heat he gave off. Eventually, Matthew relaxed into his touch, lying his head back down as it was before._

_In no time at all Matthew's eyelids began to flutter closed, breaths evening out as he once again drifted off to sleep. _

_All around the two lovers the day began to lighten, the world coming awake. The day would not wait for them, but at the moment Gilbert was perfectly content as he was. Far above, the early morning breeze rustled the leaves of the many trees throughout the Canadian forest surrounding them on all sides. A little ways away the sound of the water lapping against the rocks at the edge of the small creak they had made their camp by could be heard._

_Gilbert smiled to himself, allowing the calming sounds to sooth him as he closed his eyes, breathing in the moment._

"_Ich liebe dich, Birdie…"_

xXx

Gilbert wiped a single tear from his cheek embarrassedly, willing more not to come. _No,_ he thought. _I shouldn't think like that. Matt would be happy for them, would want them to be happy. It's the end of the war, they deserve to celebrate…_

God, it was just so hard to feel anything for all those people out there when they all looked so happy, and all he wanted to do was crawl into a dark hole and never come out again.

Canada was gone. _Matthew _was gone. Didn't they care?

Sure, when it had first happened it had been a big deal. The attacks had been going on for years. Barely anything was left standing where most of his major cities use to be, and those which hadn't yet been targeted had long since been evacuated.

The other nations had been doing everything they possibly could to protect him. Especially his brother. Alfred never hesitated to retaliate the attacks on his brother when Matthew was too weak to. Alfred lost millions of his own trying to protect the one he cared about most.

Still, in the end, it had all meant nothing.

No one had thought that a nation so big and so strong and so proud could disappear just like that. There weren't enough nuclear weapons on the planet to cover so much land. Even if all his major cities were gone, there still enough space that in the future he would have been able to rebuild on.

At least that's what they had all thought.

xXx

"_Prussia, wait!" _

_A hand shot out, latching onto his arm, holding him back._

_Gilbert was determined to get past. He tugged hard, trying to rip his arm away, but despite been injured from the war, the American was still much stronger than him._

"_Let me go," Gilbert demanded in a low growl._

"_Just wait," Alfred repeated. "Please…"_

_Gilbert shot him a dangerous glare, but the expression softened when he saw the tears glistening back at him from the American's own eyes._

_He sighed impatiently, stepping back so that he was even with Alfred. "What?" he snapped._

_Alfred swallowed heavily, relaxing his hold on the other just barely. "I don't think you should go in there just yet," he said in an uncharacteristically small voice._

_Gilbert didn't budge. "I want to see him."_

_Alfred gave him a pleading look. "I know, it's just…"_

"_I'm his __**boyfriend **__for God's sake." Gilbert snapped, trying and failing once again to tear his arm free of the death-grip Alfred had on it. "You're not the only one who cares about Birdie, okay? I. Want. To. See. Him."_

"_I know," Alfred spoke slowly. "I know. You do care about him… and he cares about you. I know that…" he looked away, gaze trailing sadly on the door to his brother's designated recovery room._

"_Then let me see him," Gilbert gave one last tug, and this time Alfred released him. The albino scowled, cradling his offended arm to his chest and trying to rub some circulation back into it. Alfred stood solemn and quite, studying the shiny tiled floor. _

"_Whatever," he huffed, dropping his arm to his side and side stepping around the American and closer towards the door to Matthew's room. He reached out, just about to turn the handle, when suddenly Alfred spoke again._

"_Prussia?"_

"_What?"_

"…_It's bad."_

_Something sharp and painful stabbed at Gilbert's chest, latching onto his heart. For the first time since he had heard of the attack, Gilbert hesitated. He had been so impatient to get to his lover's aid, to be at his side, to see him… But just what exactly was he about to see? _

_He swallowed, and when he spoke his tone had softened considerably. "How bad?"_

_Behind him, a single tear slide down Alfred's cheek. "Really bad."_

_Gilbert closed his eyes as the words were spoken. _

_He took a deep breath, and pushed the door open._

_The young man on the bed across the room was hardly recognizable for his sickly pale skin, the thick layers of bandages and gauze which covered most of his face and the sheer amount of steadily whirling and beeping hospital equipment surrounding him, the only things keeping him alive at the moment.  
_

"_Oh my God…"_

xXx

Gilbert stood abruptly, pushing off from the couch with a choked sound as he tried to hold back his tears.

He didn't want to be here anymore. He didn't care what the man on the screen had to say about how sweet this great victory would taste knowing that they worked for it so hard. Gilbert didn't find a single damn thing to be sweet about it. He hadn't even gotten a fucking chance to fight! He hadn't even gotten the chance to try to save Matthew…

Gilbert gave a roar of pain, anger and sorrow as he smashed his hand down on the tiny television, denting the top and instantly killing the picture on the screen. Tears burned in his eyes, but he would not cry. He refused to cry on this day of all days.

Matthew wouldn't have wanted him to cry today. Matthew would have been happy that the war was finally over; he would have wanted to celebrate. Gilbert could imagine it so perfectly; Matthew sitting there on the couch, elegant as ever, smiling up at him with those smooth, gentle lips, his beautiful violet eyes twinkling with happiness at the great news they had just heard.

"It's over, Gil."

Oh God… Gilbert could practically hear him, the softness of his voice, so sweet and melodic and just… perfect.

"It's over now. It's going to be okay. Everything's going to get better now."

He would have been so beautiful today.

xXx

The world would never know peace.

Humankind would meet its end before the people of this planet learned to get along with one another. There would always be pain and sadness and inequality and discrimination and corruption and hunger and poverty. There would always be war.

But to have a war as horrifyingly brutal, violent and atrocious as the Third World War end only for another one to start up less than a dozen years later was a little too much for even the most optimistic of people to handle.

And Gilbert Beilschmidt had never been much of an optimist to begin with.

"And so you see, that's why I've decided that I'm staying here. There's nowhere else I'd rather be than here with you when the Great and Mighty Prussia finally comes to his end. His real end."

The silver haired man smiled sadly down at the weather-worn stone which stuck from the ground at his feet, a small patch of wild flowers sprouting up around it.

"You always liked flowers, didn't you Birdie? Your winters were so long that whenever spring came around you'd get so excited about all the little flower buds. Remember?"

Gilbert knew he wasn't going to get an answer. He was talking to a gravestone after all.

But yet somehow, that didn't seem to matter. It wouldn't be that way for long. Soon he would be able to see the real him again. He would be able to see him and hold him and smell him and hear his gorgeous voice. Soon they would be together again. There would be no more pain and no more loneliness and no more regret and no more war.

"Wait for me, okay? I'll be there soon, I promise. I know this isn't what you wanted for me, but I think it's best after all."

"_Bruder_," a sudden voice spoke from behind, shattering Gilbert's short moment of perfection. "It's time to go. We're still not safe here; it's too close to the city. They'll be coming soon."

"I know, West. I'm staying." Gilbert turned, giving his brother one last smile as the tears streamed down his cheeks.

"I want to be with him."

* * *

**End.**

**Well, there you have it. This is how I celebrate finishing English projects. ...Yep.**

**Thanks for reading and please feel free to review and tell me what your pretty little brain thinks!**


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